#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Voting Rights Act dealt major blow, SCOTUS hears birthright citizenship case, New reparations bill

Episode Date: May 17, 2025

5.15.2025 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Voting Rights Act dealt major blow, SCOTUS hears birthright citizenship case, New reparations bill  A federal court just delivered a gut punch to the Voting Rights Act. If you can't sue to protect your vote... who can?  Judith Browne Dianis, the Executive Director of the  Advancement Project National Office, will be here to discuss this ruling. The Supreme Court takes on birthright citizenship... Could kids born on U.S. soil lose their claim to being American? Plus, a new reparations bill hits Capitol Hill. Is real action finally on the table? We honor a true trailblazer--former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman--as the nation reflects on her powerful legacy. #BlackStarNetwork partner: Fanbasehttps://www.startengine.com/offering/fanbase This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.  This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. You should read the Offering Circular (https://bit.ly/3VDPKjD) and Risks (https://bit.ly/3ZQzHl0) related to this offering before investing. Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Music Today is Thursday, May 15th, 2025. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfilled, streaming live on the Black Star Network, a federal court just delivered a gut punch to various legal groups regarding the Voting Rights Act. If you can't sue to protect your vote, who can? Judith Brown-Diane is executive director of the Advancement Project will join us. The Supreme Court takes on birthright citizenship and man, they were ripping Donald Trump's lawyer in court.

Why don't we play for you what happened? Even the conservatives were like, yeah, y'all are idiots. Plus a new reparations bill hits Capitol Hill Is real action on the table? Well, not with Republicans in control Also, of course yesterday elections Herman former labor secretary was funeralized in Washington, DC We'll show you some of the eulogies delivered at her funeral Lots to talk about including that idiot Donald Trump He talks about a speech that Hitler gave

in front of the Eiffel Tower. It never happened. Why are we not discussing his cognitive disability? It's time to bring the funk on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Let's go. He's got whatever the piss he's on it. Whatever it is he's got to scoop the fat to find. Let's rolling. Yeah, yeah. It's Uncle Roroyo. Yeah, yeah.

It's rolling Martin. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Rolling with rolling now. Yeah. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's rolling Martin now. in Montana. Yeah.

Our town. We warned you about this case that originated out of Arkansas. Now we see a federal's appeals court has weighed in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that private citizens and civil rights groups can no longer sue to block racial discriminatory voting laws in seven Midwestern states. That includes Missouri, Iowa, North Dakota.

Under this decision, only the U. S. Justice Department can bring lawsuits under a key section of the voting rights act. Joining us right now is Judith Brown, Diana's executive director of the Advancement Project, National Office. Judith, walk people through this because, again, I remember where this originated in Arkansas, and there was a ruling there. And what this is about is groups like yours, NAACP, LDF, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law,

NAACP, Black Voters Matter matter and others, trying to freeze them out. And so when you only can say the DOJ can file a lawsuit, but you look at right now, we know Donald Trump, his DOJ is pulling out of all voting rights lawsuits. That's right, that's right Ron. So this is the second time that this court in the eighth circuit has ruled on this issue. Basically, what they have done is that they have slammed the courthouse doors shut to individuals

who are saying that they have been discriminated against in voting, and to, as you pointed out, organizations. At Vanser Project, we're lawyers. We bring cases on behalf of grassroots organizations and civic engagement organizations like the NAACP that has members. And they're now saying, too bad, you can't bring those lawsuits here in the Eighth Circuit. Now, it's important to know, the first time around it was that they said the Voting Rights Act doesn't allow you to come into court. Now they're saying that there's another statute that they tried to use as kind of like a runaround that, right, which is section 1983,

that allows you to bring all kinds of cases under the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, et cetera. They're like, no, you can't use that either. So again, this is them, they basically are said, we didn't stutter the first time. We said, y'all can't come in this court bringing these kinds of cases. And this is important because I've done a lot of litigation over the years in places like Missouri.

Missouri is covered by this. Missouri continuously tried to pass voter ID laws that were restrictive. This also covers North Dakota and South Dakota, where we know there have been a lot of issues around Native Americans in particular voting. Minnesota. So this is important. It's contained for right now. For right now, right?

But what they're also saying is that when they gutted, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, they said, don't worry about it. You got Section 2. Now we have courts saying, no, you don't even have Section 2. Only DOJ is going to be able to represent you. And guess what? Just saw a report the other day, there are only three lawyers left in the Civil Rights

Division's V rights section, because they laid everybody off, they fired them, they gave them buyouts, they reassigned them, and they got out of a lot of cases. And so we're looking at this particular jurisdiction, those folks are without any recourse with regard to voting rights under the Voting Rights Act. And for people again, who don't quite understand what's going on here, what we're dealing with is conservatives, they want to shut down as many paths possible.

And when you talk about when they gutted section four in Shelby v. Holder, then they went after section two, the case out of Arizona, that was section two. And so the problem they have is, if they cannot get rid of the entire Voting Rights Act, which Clarence Thomas has always wanted to do, then their whole deal is, let's go after each section.

And so if we just simply declare various sections unconstitutional, there really is no law. That's right. They've been chipping away at it, right? So when they did the section four, section five piece, that was one thing. But section two is the crown, really the crown jewel, right? Because it is the opportunity for those of us outside

of the government to bring these cases. And they've been chipping away at it and making it harder for us to bring cases. And now they're saying, we're not only gonna make it hard, you cannot bring those cases at all. And so we are now in a predicament around whether or not we're going to be able to see cases brought in these jurisdictions. And so, and again, this circuit, they only apply to the states that's in their jurisdiction. Right, right. So again, that is

Arkansas, Missouri, we're St. Louis' and we know they've been up to a lot of trickery. Right. right right so again that is Arkansas Missouri with Saint Louis is we know they've been up to a lot of trickery right Minnesota Nebraska North Dakota South Dakota and Iowa are covered but again this is the other thing folks because you need to know what your own state is up to get right because other states signed on to the brief and filed amicus briefs supporting this case what states do you have those. Yeah, Florida Georgia look we black folks a sit in Kansas

Louisiana Mississippi Montana Nebraska South Carolina Texas. West Virginia Utah all signed on. So that means that they're gonna try the same thing in court cases that they see filed in those states. Now, again, for people to understand, the recent wins that we've seen, redistricting the seat in Alabama, Louisiana, those were a result of section two.

Right, that's right. So really, and those were cases brought by outside legal groups. Yeah, that's right. And so, right, so this is the thing. We have to understand the kinds of cases we're talking about. They're redistricting cases, right?

Which is about cutting up the pie around power. But it's also the cases, voter ID cases that we've brought. It's the purge cases. Like we have purge cases now in Georgia. It's around, you know, when the SAVE Act, if it passes, we'll be bringing lawsuits around that. So it will cover all kinds of voting rights cases. And we need to understand that they are,

like you said, Roland, they're going at it from every which way. You know, we are gonna shut this down because we never liked the Voting Rights Act, because we know the amount of power that black people have gotten because of the passage of the Voting Rights Act. So they are going way back.

They are trying to take us back. And we should understand that the 15th Amendment and the 14th Amendment are under attack also, and that this is real. They are not playing with us because they know that we have had way too much progress and we have built too much power. And so they're trying to take us backwards.

Again, this is what I was trying to get people to understand when I wrote my book, White Fear, how the browning of America is making white folks lose their minds. And I've told this story numerous times. There's a black anchor at a broadcast network who I sent the book to. And the response I got back was,

would love to have you on my show, but my white producers don't like the title. And I said, you know I write about your white producers in the book. And I said, this is part of the problem. I said, part of the problem is here that these white producers, these white editors, these white executives, they don editors, these white executives,

they don't want to talk about these issues because it unveils really what's happening in this country. I guess they will upset, again, white fear how the browning of America is making white folks lose their minds. When you have Alabama, where a court just ruled, had they had a conservative court, two Trump judges,

that they had never seen a state just openly ignore a federal judicial decision. Louisiana, same thing, Louisiana and Alabama tried to do an end around after the Supreme Court had already ruled on these seats. People have to also understand is that the reason this decision, this ruling here, is important because what their strategy is, the strategy is file a suit

in a conservative state, have a hard right federal district judge rule in their favor, appeal it to a conservative circuit court of appeals, and then they agree with the district because the whole goal is to get the conservative Supreme Court to rule, and they know they start with at least four votes. And they want some conflict between the circuits. So because here's the thing is people need to understand that, again, I cannot underscore it, like how crazy this case is.

No one would have ever thought that you could actually say that there is no private right of action for individuals and organizations to go in under the voting rights act. You know why? Because we've been doing it for a long time. Over 400 cases have been brought that are individual or by organizations since 1982. And so this was unthinkable. Like it's just, it's a, you don't even like, we don't even consider it.

You know how many cases I have filed in my career? Like you just don't even think for one second that you can't go in. So what they do is you're right. They go circuit by circuit. Let's go and let's bring these cases up. That's how affirmative action went under. That's how Roe v. Wade went under.

It is a CON spheracy that is using the courts to undermine our fundamental rights and the right to vote being the most precious of them. Well, we truly see again what's going on. And now let me shift to what took place today. There was a lot of drama at the Supreme Court regarding this challenge to the 14th Amendment and the birthright citizenship. Here is some of what was said this challenge to the 14th Amendment and the birthright citizenship.

Here is some of what was said and talk about just being outlandish, the arguments made by Donald Trump's lawyer, the Solicitor General. So what do you say about the practical problem? So put out of, let's put out of our minds the merits of this, and just look at the abstract question of universal injunctions. What is your response to what some people think is the practical problem? And the practical problem is that there are 680 district

court judges, and they are dedicated, and they are scholarly, and I'm not impugning their motives in any way. But you know, sometimes they're wrong. dedicated and they are scholarly and I'm not impugning their motives in any way, but you know sometimes they're wrong. And all Article 3 judges are vulnerable to an occupational disease which is the disease of thinking that I am right and I can do whatever I want. Now on a multi-member appellate court that is restrained by one's colleagues, but trial judge, the trial judge sitting in the trial judges courtroom is the monarch of that

of that realm and there are situations in which trial judges the the president does something it could be President Trump, could be President Biden, could be President Obama. The trial judge says this is unlawful and I'm going to order, I'm going to enjoin it and I'm convinced I'm right so I'm not going to stay the injunction and then an application is made to the Court of Appeals to stay the injunction. The Court of Appeals gives it the back of the hand and then the case comes immediatelyals gives it the back of the hand, and then the case comes immediately to us in the context of an emergency application. And some of us have said, well, we don't think we should do anything in those situations

unless it is indiscutably clear that the court below was wrong. So what do you say to that practical problem? So we're mindful of the practical problems. I will say the states have had a through line as well across administrations. We have never believed, even as nationwide injunctions restrained policies that we favored, that they were categorically off the table.

We've always taken the position that they are sometimes available in narrow circumstances, whether we like the policy or don't like the policy. And so you might have some cases where the nature of the harm, this is the DACA example from my friend on the other side, where the nature of the harm, which was Texas saying it had to give benefits to residents in the state, is actually entirely remedied by a statewide state-only injunction that applies just to Texas, because that might incentivize individuals to leave Texas, and then Texas doesn't have to give them benefits anymore.

So you might have a case like that. But sometimes you are going to have cases where it is impossible to remedy the state's own injuries, and the alternatives are not practically or legally workable, and that describes this case perfectly. And so I don't think the answer is a bright line that means even in those situations it's not possible for the states to get relief. On the day after it goes into effect it's just a very practical question how it's gonna work. What do hospitals do with a newborn? What do states do with a newborn? I don't think they do anything

different. What the executive order says in section 2 is that federal officials do not accept documents that have the wrong designation of citizenship from people who are subject to the executive order. How are they going to know that? The states can continue to, the federal officials will have to figure that out. How? So you can imagine a number of ways that the federal officials could. Such as? Such as they could require a showing of, you know, documentation showing legal presence in the country. For a temporary visitor, for example, they could see whether they're require a showing of you know documentation showing legal presence in the country For a temporary visitor for example They could see whether they're on a b1 visa which would Exclude kind of the birthright citizenship in that kind of all the newborns is that how that's gonna work

Again, we don't know Y'all it only got better here is Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan Questioning them and, so you get to follow whatever laws you want to follow, listen to this. Abbott, you're not willing to commit to abiding by the Second Circuit's precedent in my—suppose that there's a single person who brings the suit, and it gets all the way up to us after three or four or five years. And we say, you know, we really do agree with those four precedents that Justice Sotomayor

started with, and your EO is illegal. Is that only going to bind the one guy who brought the suit? No, that would be a nationwide precedent that the government would respect. So finally, once it gets to us after four years, you're going to respect that? Yes, and in addition, we may well respect the Second Circuit. So finally, once it gets to us after four years, you're going to respect that. Yes. And in addition, we may well respect the Second Circuit. It just is. And for four years, there are going to be like an untold number of people who, according to all the law that this court has ever made, ought to be citizens who are not being treated.

It's better because even even conservative, even conservative Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett, got in on the action. And his was crazy. If you look at social media, the right is calling her a turncoat. They're saying, how dare she, because she's actually applying the law. So I find it interesting that the law and order crowd is upset that the law is being followed. Oh, that's right, because they don't like the law.

Listen to this. You're going to be standing up here in the next case saying that Rule 23 is inapt for this circumstance with this number of people, maybe with some questions that are individual, who knows? So let's put Rule 23 aside, because I've got to tell you, that does not fill me with great confidence. How else are we going to get to the right result here,

which is on my assumption that the EO is illegal? That would be a profoundly wrong result. But I think what I would offer is that, very similar to Labrador against Poe, what the court should be engaging here is a balancing of the equitable factors as to the scope of remedial relief, not as to the underlying merits. And our contention that this exceeds the traditional scope of equity that's reflected in the 1789

Judiciary Act, we're overwhelmingly likely to succeed on those merits for all the reasons that have stated in our people. I mean, that's a lot of words and I don't have an answer for if one thinks and you know Look, there are all kinds of abuses of nationwide injunctions But I think that the question that this case presents is that if one thinks that it's quite clear that the EO is Illegal, how does one get to that result in what time frame on? Your set of rules without the possibility of a nationwide injunction? On this case and on many similar cases, the appropriate way to do it is for there to be

multiple lower courts considering it, the appropriate percolation that goes to the lower courts, and then ultimately this court decides the merits in a nationwide binding precedent. You have a complete inversion of that through the nationwide injunctions with the district courts. So, General Sauer, are you really going to answer Justice Kagan by saying there's no way to do this expeditiously? Well, I'll refer to my former answers. Rule 23 provides the tools to do so. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has

gone up so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Moll, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.

So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

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Apple podcasts are wherever you get your podcast. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early.

Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position pregame to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. But you resisted Justice Kagan when she said could the individual plaintiffs form a class? That has never been briefed in the court below. I do not concede that we wouldn't oppose class certification in this particular case. There may be arguments that this case is or is not appropriate for certification. If there were a class appropriate for a class certification, you concede that that could resolve the question quickly?

Yes, absolutely. You concede it could resolve the question quickly through precedent? Yes, absolutely. It could do so. I mean, we obviously- What was crazy listening to this, Judith, is that their position is,

no, I mean, we don't necessarily have to follow a court's ruling because there are ones where we disagree. And you know what? We don't really care what the courts rule. And so, in fact, that was this exchange, there was this exchange with Coney Barrett that was unbelievable just listening to them. And it shows you what they're doing in practice.

They are choosing to pay attention to laws that they like and just blatantly ignore the courts for laws they don't like. That's right. And what is happening is that the dictator in chief, right, wants to hand down executive orders that are unconstitutional and have them cover the land, the whole country. They're going to be in effect.

But then what they don't want to happen is to have the courts come back and say, no, actually, across the country, you're wrong and it's unconstitutional. This case, this is the thing, is that the court hasn't gotten to, because folks need to understand, the court hasn't gotten to the questions about whether or not it was constitutional, right, whether or not birthright citizenship actually still exists. This case is about can he actually be a dictator and say across the land and then people can't fight back in the same way. What they're saying is the government's saying is everybody needs to bring an individual

case from everywhere instead of a court saying no, that whole thing is unconstitutional. So this is about power and it is about choosing which law they want to follow at any given time that advances their ideology and their policies. Yeah, I mean, and so to that particular point, I just wanna play this so people could just understand, this is literally what the Solicitor General, who is the occupant of the Oval Office is, this is that person's lawyer.

This person is arguing on behalf of the United States. That's what he's arguing. And listen to how ludicrous this is. And this is him being questioned by conservative justice, Amy Coney Bari. And opinions and judgments here. Did I understand you correctly to tell Justice Kagan that the government wanted to reserve

its right to maybe not follow a Second Circuit precedent, say, in New York because you might disagree with the opinion? Our general practice is to respect those precedents, but there are circumstances when it is not a categorical practice. It is, and that is not just a new policy. Is this administration's practice or the longstanding practice of the federal government? And I'm not talking about in the Fourth Circuit. Are you going to respect a Second Circuit?

I'm talking about within the Second Circuit. And can you say, is that this administration's practice or a longstanding one? As I understand it, longstanding policy of the Department of Justice. Really? Yes, that we generally, as it was phrased to me, generally respect circuit president, but not necessarily in every case. And certain examples, some examples might be a situation where we're litigating to try and get that circuit president overruled and so forth.

Well, okay, so I'm not talking about a situation in which you know, the Second Circuit has a case from 1955 and you think it's time for it to be challenged. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about in this kind of situation. I'm talking about this week the Second Circuit holds that the executive order is unconstitutional, and then what do you do the next day or the next week? Generally, we follow those. So you're still saying generally?

Yes. And you still think that it's generally the policy, longstanding policy of the federal government to take that approach? That is my understanding. OK. But it sounds to me like you accept a Cooper versus Aaron kind of situation for the Supreme Court, but not for, say, the Second Circuit. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question.

I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question.

I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. opinion as well in the circuits as well but my understanding is that has not been a categorical practice in the way respect for the precedents and the judgments of the Supreme Court has been. So you're not hedging it all with respect to the precedent of this court? That is correct I believe the quotation from our application directly addresses that and we stand by that. So I mean Roland this is why some of us say that we are in a constitutional crisis, because this administration is putting up the middle finger to the third branch of government, which is our courts.

And they don't care. They're like, we will decide if we want to comply or not. We will pick and choose. Whichever advances our policies and what we intend to do in this country and to this country, we will decide whether or not to comply. And so we need to understand the depth of this and how horrible this is, because they're basically saying you don't exist courts unless we like think you're right and we will defy you. And like you said, the law and order crowd is saying,

hell no to law and order unless they agree with it. It's unbelievable. That's what we're dealing with. You know, the Brown Dianas, I appreciate it. Keep up the fight. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Take care.

Folks, gotta go to break. We come back. My panel cannot wait to weigh in on all of this. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here at the Black Star Network. Hey y'all, welcome to the Other Side of Change, only on the Black Star Network and hosted by myself, Rhea Baker, and my good sis, Jamira Burley. We are just two millennial women tackling everything at the intersection of politics, gender, and pop culture. And we don't just settle for commentary. This is about solution-driven dialogue to get us to the world as it could be and not just as it is. Watch us on the Black Star Network, so tune in to the

episode of Change. Now streaming on the Black Star Network. In France, me and Tony, and accidentally went to the Louvre, right, but I had never been and I saw a side door. And we got off the little bus and I said, let's go to the Louvre. I'm just like, let's go to the Louvre. Right. We're here. This black girl is at the door with this white guy, black African girl. And she says, oh my God, who knows who Bill Calloway?

And I'm like this, you know me? And come to find out we were at the wrong door. But she said, I'm gonna let you in, just go in here. But I was in Paris, France. And that shocked me. She knew my name, she knew me. She knew my movie. You know, so it's like, you just gotta,

as they say, build and they will come. Put it out there, you just got to, as they say, build and they will come. Put it out there. People will find it. They will come. Well, I don't know. What? What? What?

What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What?

What? What? What? How you doing? My name is Mark Carey and you're watching Roland Martin. Unfiltered deep into it like pasteurized milk without the 2%. We getting deep. You want to turn that shit off? We're doing an interview, motherfucker. Dr. Greg Card, Department of African American Studies, Howard University out of DC, Recy Colbert, host of the Recy Colbert Show and Sirius XM Radio out of DC as well.

Joining me in studio is Robert Petillo. He of course, civil rights attorney out of, well just attorney, he comes a bunch of stuff out of Atlanta. Greg, I'm gonna start with you. You've taught in the Howard University Law School. You know a little bit about the law. Let's talk about these,

let's look at these two cases actually together. And then that is what we're dealing with is very simple. We're dealing with the right. If people really understand, if they really pay attention to understand what the right has been focused on, they have despised the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They've despised the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They despise the 1968 Fair Rights Act. They've despised the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They've despised the 1968 Fair Housing Act. And many of these folks,

they were actually supportive of civil rights laws before Barry Goldwater, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona ran for president, and he wrote his book, The Conscience of a Conservative. And the reality is they have been angry with the federal courts, with federal judges, because they also were the ones who executed Brown versus Board of Education.

And so they have been trying to tear down these federal statutes, these decisions, because they believe that this is the undercurrent. And I need people to understand. What we're talking about here, this is the undercurrent of the black civil rights and economic rights movement. How we got to where we are right now,

not saying it's perfect, not saying it's been amazing, but the fact of the matter is, black people are where we are today because of federal civil rights laws. And they say we need to get rid of all of this. You're right. Not just black people, everybody in the country. You know, when I say-

Well, when I say black people, the reality is black people fighting for these laws has helped everybody. Absolutely, absolutely without a doubt, which is why ironically the clown has been repeating the talking points. He has been fed by Stephen Miller, that hate monger and the crowd at

project 2025 to say that the 14th Amendment was passed not only because of slavery, but only for Black people, which is absurd. But, yeah, that's the bizarro twist in it, the 180-degree reversal. The reason I have been saying consistently for years that they're going to tear it up is because they're going to tear it up. And it, I mean, is the idea of a nation. The United States isn't a nation, of course, but the aspiration to being a nation, in other words, a country with a common set of values and culture, obviously with distinctions between the groups of people here, but generally speaking a kind of foundation, that is a fantasy. The United States is a settler state. It is a white settler state.

And what we saw with the importation of the scattering of Afrikaners, the most coddled minority in Africa, is the United States basically, well, the white Nazis who've captured the executive branch and who increasingly want to capture the judicial branch are rendered irrelevant. They're basically taking that Statue of Liberty everybody loves to look at and saying, we lift our lamp and say, this is a beacon, a rallying point for all the white people left in the world.

The United States government now setting itself up as the last hope for white supremacy. And in some ways it is, and it's going to fail. But in the context of these two cases today, their attack in that first case that you mentioned, as you talk about when she brought up section 1983, United States Code 42, section 1983, that's the Ku Klux Klan, that's 1871. They are now trying to take the jackhammer at those Reconstruction Era amendments, trying to take that jackhammer at those reconstruction era amendments, trying to destroy any notion that anything other than whiteness needs to be protected. That's their whole notion of reverse racism and whiteness is being persecuted. That's what Stephen Miller said when he said this is what the refugee law was meant to protect, basically whiteness. And then finally, in the second case we heard, it was interesting to hear Amy Comey Barrett, who, like, not

to the degree of John Roberts, John Roberts is going to vote with Kataji Brown Jackson, Atlanta Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor on this, I think. But you heard Amy Comey Barrett evoke Cooper v. Aaron. That's the 1958 case where Arkansas, Little Rock in particular, is like, we are not desegregating these schools. And the Supreme Court, in a decision that reinforced the concept of judicial supremacy said, we have ruled, so therefore this 14th Amendment ruling that we have applies to all the states. Their attempt now is to fracture the concept of federalism

and force everybody that wants to enforce a constitutionally protected right to have to go to court to enforce it. If they win on this, I think Comey Barrett is probably going to waver. And if Roberts wavers with her, that's enough to make it 5-4. Kavanaugh might even. But if they win on this, they have destroyed the United States of America in terms of the courts. And all I can say is, you people who think that that's going to be a benefit for you, get your popcorn, friends, because the Civil War is right on the edge. And they ain't got that kind of muscle anymore. They are trying to, Robert, they're

trying to play black people with Trump talking about, oh, the 14th Amendment, that was only for black people. And of course, these FBA folk falling forward and jumping forward like that. And I'm like, first of all, I don't know what in the hell y'all sitting here think y'all falling for. Like, you don't know when you're getting played, but people have to understand that this is just chipping away.

If you chip away at the 14th Amendment and then say it only applies to black people, again, as- A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action, and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday we will be diving into the biggest stories in

business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two and three on May 21st and episodes four, five and six on June 4th.

Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes sir, we are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug thing. Benny the Butcher.

Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette, MMA fighter Liz Karamouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcast.

Lava for Good Plus Lava for Good Plus Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback.

Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Greg, they're going after the entire infrastructure, all the laws, all the civil rights laws, all the protections, because then they wanna say, lead up to the states.

You're completely correct. Now I want people to understand that Project 2025 lays this out very clearly. We're in the middle of a three-part process. We're at the end of point one in this three-part process. And there's a reason that in Trump's tweet, he specifically said, slave babies, the babies of slaves, because his parents, or his grandparents who came in,

were also illegal immigrants. So under his logic, his grandfather, Friedrich Drumpf, the Bavarian draft dodger who came here in the 1890s would not be a citizen. He's making it very clear what they're attempting to do. When they talked about making America great again, we thought they meant the 1950s. They were talking about the 1850s. And how do we get there under Project 2025 and what

they're laying out? Well, first you get Trump back into office and then you change the voting laws to ensure a permanent MAGA majority. This is laid out, I think, in Chapter 3 of Project 2025. Then, this is where we're at right now, you have to get a filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate in the midterm elections You have to get a filibuster proof majority in the United States Senate in the midterm elections. Once you get a filibuster proof majority in the US Senate, that means every one of these executive orders that are on the books right now,

you can pass them into law on day one. That means that everything that Trump has said and done that could be reversed by the stroke of a pen right now, now that becomes law. If you get a filibuster proof majority in 2026 midterms, January 20th or whenever the new Congress is sworn in, in 2027, all those executive orders now become the law of the lands. And we have now repealed the civil rights set, repealed the voting rights set, repealed fair housing, public accommodation. Everything that we believe in as being the civil rights movement now

becomes just a historical event that happened that has now been reversed. So how do we get to step three? Step three requires a convention of the states, a constitutional convention. We've heard conservatives talk about this literally since the 1980s, that they want to redraw the constitution and bring it back to the original intent of the founders.

So that means you have to put in place an apparatus, not just to have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, but change voting and change election laws to the point that you can have a three fourth majority in the House, in the Senate and in the state legislatures. Remember we have about 26 states right now that are Republican states. They want to get that to three fifths of the states being Republican states. At that point they can call a convention of the states and fully rewrite the constitution.

Trump wants a third term, you rewrite it in there. You wanna get rid of the 14th Amendment, you can rewrite it in there. You wanna establish a permanent underclass of undocumented workers who can be the new slaves of America, you can do that with that convention of the states. So it's not as if these things are secret.

It's not as if they're not playing out directly in front of us. The reason you attack the 14th Amendment is the 14th Amendment is the amendment by which the federal power then flows down to the states and then to the individuals. If you say that the president has the power to simply ignore or repeal parts of the 14th Amendment,

then he has the power to simply ignore or repeal parts of the 14th amendment, then he has the power to repeal or alter all of the 14th amendment with the stroke of a pen. We're seeing the wholesale reorganization of America, and if you look at mainstream media, they're talking about the Ditty Trial. I want folks to understand just how serious and how grave of a constitutional crisis we are in currently. The president of the United States, his sons with the Trump Organization, just last week they announced a $5.5 billion deal to build a beachfront community in Qatar.

The next day they announced that Trump's going to be getting a $400 million plane from Qatar. They announced a deal to develop Trump towers in Syria. And guess what? He announced that he develop Trump towers in Syria. And guess what? He announced that he's removing sanctions from Syria. They announced they're putting up new developments in Dubai on the waterfront. They do hold Trump area, $1.5 billion, I believe. The exact same week, Trump announces we're gonna be

sending AI chips to the United Arab Emirates. I think today he's in Abu Dhabi being honored at the mosque there. So when we're seeing these things taking place in front of us, they are not somehow isolated events. They are not disconnected from the reality of what Trump is doing. He made a deal, made an agreement

that in order to get out of the billion dollars of debt that he was after 2020, to get out of the thousand years he was facing of convicted of all crimes in 2020. He is essentially sold out the United States to the richest people in the world in these conservative organizations. And their goal is nothing short

of rewriting the American constitution and essentially winding the clock back, not to 1950 when America was great, but to 1850 when they believe America was great. And we are either all gonna be complicit and stand by and ignored, or we're going to stand up and figure out how to fight back against that now.

You know, Reese, I remember, I remember a lot of loud mouth, so-called black conscious folk. First of all, saying your vote don't matter, saying they all the same, saying the Democrats ain't doing nothing for you, yelling tangibles and all that. Same folk would talk about how their pockets were full

when Trump was there last time. Oh, ain't no difference between Harris and Trump. Oh, Harris, she put all these black men in jail. They were, and so they were on YouTube yapping their miles and we know who they are. And again, they claim to love black people, but all that sort of talk. Yet what these folks are doing is with precision like consistency,

attacking everything, economics, education, politics, voting rights, you name it, they're going after, and they want to strip it all away. And have you noticed that these simpletons are mighty quiet? Have you noticed that these so-called freedom-loving black people,

independent-thinking black people, independent thinking black people, all talking about their documentaries and their schools and their projects and all. It's amazing how, and then now, oh, we need to be about self. We need to be doing for self. We need to be supporting black owned businesses,

but saying nothing about them cutting off contracts, billions of dollars in contracts. I know numerous black-owned businesses that have had federal contracts in, grants in, land off people, but now they're quiet. But I thought this was supposed to be this golden opportunity for Black America. Well, you know, that's what happens when your chaos agents that are paid and the check runs

out because what do they need y'all for to keep paying y'all to sow division when they've won? They won everything they could possibly desire and more with Trump winning and then the Republicans keeping actually winning back the House and the Senate. So, yes, of course, they're going to be quiet, because now it's on to the next chaos or the next things, whether it's the diaspora wars or whether it's the gender wars or whatever the health situation may be, maybe a little bit of pop culture.

So it doesn't surprise me that they're quiet, because they were unserious to begin with. But the thing that is so troubling about this is that the case about the constitutionality of birthright citizenship is not going to be immediately decided. This case is actually more so about the ability of judges to issue injunctions, nationwide injunctions or far-reaching injunctions. That is the troubling part, because the this country is only held together as much as it has to date under Trump because of the injunctions that have been put forth or that have been put in place by this by these different judges.

The most destructive policies have not been enacted yet, whether that's destructive in terms of our education, destructive in terms of our economy, aside from, obviously, the tariffs and a whole number of things. Those policies have been stopped by judges. And so, if the Supreme Court sides with the Trump administration thought process that, and their actions that they don't have to listen to judges and that judges have to, you know, they have very limited authority, then we're going to see what a true Trump presidency, actually more like a dictatorship, is going to look like. And people are not going to like you,

because it's not going to be that your egg prices is going down, you're not going to be swimming in the dough, you're not going to have your health care, you're not even going to have a damn job. You're going to be out in the fields working. That's what you're going to do. OK? You're going to be replacing the Latinos that are getting,

you know, deported, and all the other illegal people who are getting deported, and you're going to be picking the fruit now. So, this is very, very, very far-reaching. I hope. I don't have much faith, but I hope that sanity will prevail. But this is incredibly troubling. And I think that people are already unsatisfied with how things are going, and that's without these policies being implemented. So we're in for a road of hurt. I don't think that this is going to,

I don't think that it's gonna take till 2026 to come to a head. I think this is gonna come to a head long before then and people really start to feel the impacts of Donald Trump's real policies being put in place. But see, again, Greg, this is the thing that we spend our time trying to explain to people. And I was going to do this,

I was going to actually do this later. But you can't, who can't hear me? Greg can't hear me? You talking to me, I can't hear. All right, guys, y'all figure out, y'all figure out what's going on. Y'all figure out what's going on with Greg's audio, please. I'm gonna do this, I was gonna do this later in the show. I was gonna do this later in the show.

But I'm gonna go ahead and do this right now because I need people to understand why we are so concerned at this show and why this is bothersome to us. And just give me a second, because literally I was not gonna talk about this right now. I was gonna talk about this a little bit later, but I do think the fierce urgency of now explains this. So today I got a, I got a,

I got a text, I got an email from our YouTube, our YouTube person we're signed to via YouTube. And they sent us this email. And so what YouTube has started doing, they've started ranking, if you will, or listing the rankings of all of these different podcasts, all the podcasts. And so they ranked them all in terms of numbers.

And so, you know, they got a top 100. And they said, hey, you know, you're on the list. And I was kind of like, okay, that's cool. And it was the top 100. So I'm sitting here going through the top 100 and I see this, and I'm looking at who's on the list. Now, first of all, it's very top heavy with right wingers in terms of Joe Rogan and others

and all these different people. The reason that's important because they have been, how they have been supported in these platforms and how they've been touting them for quite some time. So let me just show you this because folks, this is all tied to our conversation. And so you see right here, it says YouTube's weekly top podcast.

Let me just zoom in over here. And so you see Joe Rogan, you see the progressive Midas Touch, they've been doing great, number five. Club Shea Shea at number seven. You know, right wing comedian Theo Vaughn, he's number eight. And then you see Pat McAfee, you see Tim Poole at number 13.

He got Tim Cass, Tucker Carlson is at 18, 19. Megyn Kelly, you got Gilbert Arenas is number 20. And then you keep going and then you see 60 Minutes. You see Shay Shay was number 7. Nightcap with Shannon Sharp and Ocho Cinco is number 28. And you keep going and you're looking at all these different podcasts and NBC Night and New, Lester Holtz 38. You see Tim Poole's other podcast number 41 and you see more right wing podcast on here. Uh, the Joe button podcast is number 51. They know you keep going to 85 South comedy show, the brothers out of Atlanta, they're not 57. Uh, and then you, okay. Uh, Benny Johnson,

that plagiarist, uh, liar,winger, turning point USA, number 65. There are other right-wingers who are on here. You got progressive Brian Tyler Cohen. He's number 70. Drink Champs is number 71. And then you get to us, we're number 78. Now, we're ahead of a Democracy Watch with Mark Elias, we're ahead of Carmelo Anthony,

we're ahead of Cam Newton, we're ahead of Club 520, that's Jeff Teague's podcast, Matt Walsh, that right winger, ahead of him, ahead of Cohen O'Brien, progressive David Pakman, 97, and so that's the top 100. So that's for the week of May 5th and May 11th. Now, on March 4th, when we covered Trump's speech

to Congress, and we had Bishop William Barber in our studio, 250,000 people were watching live. So what does that tell us? That tells, and again, y'all, I did no radio, I did no television, I did no promotion of that. That was literally text messages that went around in group chats. That means that we have the, listen to me clearly,

we have the capacity to watch, but do we do it consistently? Now why am I saying that? I just showed you this top 100, and in this top 100, why is this so important of the black host on this list? Club Shayshay Entertainment, number seven. Club Shayshay entertainment Number seven Gubel Arenas number 20 sports Nightcap with Shannon and Ocho Cinco sports NBC with Lester Holt that's news. Let's hope stepping down. So that's just really NBC

Joe Budden that ain't news Again, and what they do that's great, but 85 South Comedy Show drink champs again and what they do that's great but 85 South Comedy Show, Drink Champs, what am I saying? Now right below us, Camilla Anthony, Cam Newton, Jeff T. So in the top 100 we're the only black news source. So part of the problem that we're dealing with here Greg is that we as African Americans We are in a then let me take it even further Virtually no news on radio one stations There is no news on TV one no weekly no daily

There's a monthly news magazine show on BET on TV one, no weekly, no daily. There's a monthly news magazine show on BET. Revolt has a weekly news show. I think they're starting another one, but the bottom line is, Drink Tanks is way more popular. Nobody's watching their news shows, okay? No question. Let's see here, Byron Allen has completely gutted the griot, got rid of all of those shows. Byron Allen has no, they've gutted the griot website.

There's nothing there. We can go down the line. The reality is the future of black America is eroding before our very eyes. Civil rights, economic rights, and black people are spending more time on sports, entertainment, line dancing. Now I love to dance, but I'm trying to get people to understand

they are literally stripping us of the economic underpinning and the civil rights infrastructure that ties all these things together, federal, state, county, city, school district, you name it. And we are entertaining ourselves to death. I mean, you just said it, Ro. As you were talking, I was thinking, maybe it's time for another book, the next book.

I remember when our brother, Randall Robinson, wrote The Debt. Had about 250 high school students in Philadelphia reading. He came and spoke with them. The next book he wrote was called The Reckoning. The Debt was what whites owe to blacks and that of course was 1999. I think he published that book. Then in The Reckoning where he wrote about that experience he had in Philadelphia when we had him come in and to students who had read this book and asked

him all kind of questions was The Reckoning, what blacks owe to each other. Now that you've written White Fear, perhaps the next book is Black Love or Black Self-Determination or Black Power, whatever it is. Actually, I was thinking my next book is going to be called White Validation. Well, that certainly will be a theme. And this is why I raised this, actually, because what you have just outlined, really, you have talked about before in different contexts. But whenever you talk about the Black press, when you talk about Claude Barnett—and,

actually, I have Robert Singstacks' granddaughter, because she'll be a sophomore in the fall of the house. She's in my class this semester. Shatland Mahoney did a great job this year, Mahoney. But—Malahoney. But the Black press, when it was our source of information in the 20th century, late 19th through the 20th century, mid-20th century at least, the last three quarters of the 20th century, it was clear, Ebony Jack, of course, being national, and

then the local newspapers and the regional papers or the ones that were local but were also national, like the one you ran, The Defender out of Chicago or the New York Amsterdam News, or the Pittsburgh Courier. Then you see radio, of course, emerging alongside print media to still be a powerful force. We know, of course, Recy and I were serious all those years when we first met each other, and you invited me into the Roland Martin family there. When you were at TV1, of course, you were doing Tom Joyner. There was a standard set. Sure it was light in the morning and it was kind of balanced,

but there was hard hitting news and you were the national correspondent and people receiving that through. So now the technology has moved to this visual image and this kiki culture, the social media disruption that began maybe 20 years ago or so with YouTube. And then of course, before this now with MySpace and all this and Black Planet.

And now you're in a space where all of the things that people have always talked about have been curated by the market, because capitalism is the villain in all this, to make it the thing that becomes an echo chamber, a feedback loop, and show us to us in a way that makes us even more distracted and allows these actors like you've been talking about for the first part of the show to move unimpeded.

Isn't it interesting that for day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, you on this station, in this platform, Black Star Network talking about Project 2025, and it took Taraji P. Henson in a quick mention at the BET Awards streaming and then replicated in these social media spaces for it to finally begin as a point of entry to sink in. All to this point. Maybe this is the next book, Roland. We're not going to win a war of amplification and platforms. Joe Rogan is going to win that.

Club Shea Shea is going to win that. And then him and Ocho Senko is going to win that. Club Shea Shea is going to win that. And then him and Ocho Senko are going to win that. But looking at that top 100, your presence there, the Black Star Network's presence there, regardless of where it was on that list, sends this message. Our people are starving. And when fed, they will respond. And you don't need a big studio. You don't need a large amount of resources. All you need is the committed people to contribute resources and talk to two or three others.

And when Gary Chambers and Angela Rye and everybody involved in this power tour that's going around the country need to get the message out, they don't have to start from scratch. The Black Star Network is here. This is very encouraging in a moonscape of disinformation and noise to have you there sends that message to me. See, Ray, see what I need people to understand and I guarantee you, you experienced this.

I guarantee you, Greg experienced this. I guarantee you, Greg experienced this. I guarantee you Robert experienced this when we traveled. I didn't know. Girl, I didn't know that was happening. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has

gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's

going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, Sports Reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Inc. I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st, and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the World on Drugs podcast. Yes sir, we are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug ban. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corvette. MMA fighter fighter Liz Karamouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position.

Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at ThisIsPretirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. And it takes everything in us to say, what are you listening to? What do you watch? And that's what, and I just sit there and I look at people and I'll be like,

you do know that whatever you give your time and attention to is what you care about. But then when the shit hits the fan, I mean, Reese, what we gonna do? Robert, what we gonna do? Greg, what we gonna do? Like, what you mean we? It's like we've been trying to tell you, but folks have not been paying attention. And I need our people to understand that what we're talking about, this is real. This shit that is happening right now, two blocks from this building, is real.

The rape and pillage of the country is real. Attorney General Pam Bondi sold one to five million of true social stock that was gifted to her right before the terrorist went into effect. They're sitting here stealing. They're sitting here ignoring laws. They're talking about, they're talking about, of course, a habeas corpus. They're talking about all these different things.

And folk are just sitting here saying, man, I got learned at new line dance and I love dancing, but I need us to understand there literally is a coup happening before our very eyes. And because they control the House, the Senate, and the White House, the Supreme Court said 9-0, Trump, you are to facilitate the return of this man from El Salvador. And Trump said, I can call, but I'm not going to do it.

I don't want to. And there's no mechanism because the Department of Justice is supposed to enforce Supreme Court rulings, and they're not going to do it. This shit is real. And if they think that, oh, they're busting the windows of migrants in this country, oh, they coming for us next. Oh, it's already here. I mean, look at the job numbers that came out and said that black women lost the most number of jobs proportionately to each group because of Donald Trump's policy, because of his attacks on the federal government, because of his attacks on DEI. And so the war is already here.

And matter of fact, it's been here. Because for years I've been saying citizenship is on the ballot. The laws that are being enforced now in Texas, in Georgia, and in other states, Florida, when it comes to the ability to arrest people under the suspicion of being illegal here illegally, that's what we're seeing play out now. But those laws are not new. Those laws have been on the books.

But what they have now is they have a federal government or an administration that's like, oh, yeah, let's round them up. OK, you got them. ICE is on the job now. And so what happens is, when you don't have your papers, walking around with your papers all the time, somebody will say, oh, I think you look like a Haitian who was eating the cats and the dogs. Let me go ahead and arrest your ass.

Or you look like you're from Sudan or you're from Libya or you're from wherever. And so we're dealing with the attacks on citizenship right now. So it's not some future hypothetical situation. But the reality is, you know, and we used to talk about this all the time, Roland, where somebody would flag something to you. And because now it's on CNN or it's on MSNBC, and you're like, well, we just did a half an hour on that the other day. Well, we've been talking about that for three weeks. And so what we have to do as the tastemakers

of this country is we have to be engaged in stories being told and being educated by our people on our platforms. And there are not a lot of black media platforms that do news. No, no. And there are even fewer ones that are black owned. And so the support is there. The appetite is there.

I know the appetite is there. Being on the Clay Cane show Tuesdays and Thursdays, having my show on Saturdays. And when we go on tour, we sell out in hours. And these are people that are used to hearing about the news from us. And so there's a huge appetite in black news, even from some black people,

but there isn't the investment there. Now we see the Democratic Party, and this is no shade. They're willing to invest now in content creators, they're willing to invest in micro videos, but they're still not willing to invest in the platforms that do this work day in and day out, who do it in long form, who can dedicate 20, 30 minutes in one segment

or two hours if need be, like what you do traveling around doing town halls. They're still not willing to invest in that. And so until we get the investment that a Joe Rogan has, they'll give him a hundred million dollars or these other or Club Shayshay, where he said he made more on the Cal Williams episode than he made his entire football career. Until there's investment in the kind of stories that are actually impacting the lives of Black

people, that we're going to continue to have a populace that is impacted, but they are disaffected, disillusioned, and they ain't even got a clue what's about to hit them. Robert, I'm trying to tell our people as much as possible, this thing is happening before our very eyes. And if we are not vigilant from an informational standpoint, if we are not focused on following this stuff, it's going to hit folks like a ton of bricks and then they're going to be like, oh, my God, why didn't y'all tell us? We did.

What you weren't watching or you weren't listening. Oh look, I think folks have done, Gil Scott Heron once had a song or a poem where he said, the military and the monetary, they come together whenever it's necessary. We can change that now to the media and the monetary. Look back at that list of podcasts. What do all the black creators

there in that top 100 have in common? Shannon Sharp made millions playing football. Joe Budden made millions rapping. Ocho Cinco, you can go down the line. They're all people who are independently wealthy because that's what it takes to fund one of these media operations in order to get it off the ground, to get into that top 100.

And I ain't independently wealthy, but I put it together. Roland's the only person on that list who beat the rush. He was doing this fo-fi years before everyone else decided it was a good idea, and that's why he was able to build this from scratch up. But if you look at those conservative podcasts, what you'll realize is those people aren't top 100 because they're immensely talented, are entertaining, are knowledgeable.

It's because the billionaire class got behind them. It's because you have these organizations that are trying to control the media narrative. They have now decided that they will use these individuals as their mouthpieces. They're not folks who are versed in politics. They are people who are obedient, and that's what they look for when they're funding things

on their side of the aisle. And because of that, we have a propaganda news cycle where now the parties involved can pick their press. What do I mean by that? During Trump's trip to the Middle East, he left the wire services, the independent journals, he left them here. He brought Sean Hannity with him

because he wants state propaganda and state media. He wants to ensure that when they're signing these billion dollars and that $1.2 trillion deal with Qatar, that you're not going to have real journalists asking, well, did the $400 million plane they gave you have anything to do with the $1.2 trillion deal you just signed? Did the $5.5 billion deal that the Trump organization just signed with Qatar, is that why you're making this deal right now? I thought you said that you loved and supported Israel. Hamas's leadership is in Qatar right now.

But yet still, you're funneling the money and weapons that could be used to kill Israelis. I thought you said these were your friends. You're deporting people out of America. You're taking free speech off of college campuses in defense of Israel while also making trade deals with their biggest funders. Don't forget when Donald Trump negotiated with the Taliban to end, to have a quote-unquote

end to the war in Afghanistan, that happened in Doha, Qatar, the Qatar Accords in February 2018. I think things are coincidences. So the reason that the monetary people are working with the media people is, it's easy to buy your own news now. It's easy to simply push out to millions of people through a convenient mouthpiece

exactly what messaging you want to go out there. Trump proved this in the last election. He didn't need to sit down with Roland. He didn't need to sit down with Roland. He didn't need to sit down with mainstream media. He knew he could go on Joe Rogan or the Flagrant podcast or Theo Vaughn and they would read the script and it would go out to the millions of people that they bought ads for it to go out to. So when we're talking about this media escape and finding information, we now have to take it upon ourselves to democratize this information. Of course, you're gonna see articles

every day in your newsfeed, whether you follow it or not. Did Glo really get a BBL? Who's dating who right now? Who's pregnant by who? What's going on in this celebrity lifestyle? I know folks who know more about reality show relationships than they know about their own relationship. They can tell you what housewife's husband

is cheating on them, they don't know their own husband's cheating can tell you what housewives, husbands are cheating on them that don't know their own husband cheating on them. Because they push that media out there and whiff their money because that's what they want you to start to buy. Folks, real quick, real quick. And I also say though, Democratic leaders spend more time on these podcasts

than they do on the news. Because in that 2024 election, we saw these black podcasts get more time combined than any of the, than all the Black news media shows. More time combined, our time combined, was less than the Black podcasts, the Shay Shays, and the Charlemagne's and all that kind of stuff. So Democrats have to step up and be willing

to come into these spaces, even if they don't think that they're gonna get an easy interview, and get people engaged, because if the politicians themselves don't feel like it's worth the engagement, then how the hell are their constituents supposed to see that value as well? I can tell you for a fact it took forever for Vice President Kamala Harris to come on, not because she didn't want to come on, but her staff was not booking it. And it finally took the black folks going off on her for this become, going off on the campaign chair,

Jan and Emily Dillon for that to actually happen. Then they decided to do like 25 minutes. And then as I was driving to Greenville, North Carolina, wanted to cut that and I cussed them the hell out. It did not get cut. But the time that I got with the vice president was less than club shea shea, was less than all the smoke. And I sat there and said, are y'all serious? But again, we just need to understand what's going on.

Going to go on to a quick break. We come back when I talk about how the Trump administration is trying to lean on the black run government in South Africa to help out the white supremacist Elon Musk at Starlink in that country. Folks, support Roland Martin Unfiltered. Again, the ad agencies are not supporting us, not the millionaires and billionaires, but your donations are critically important. Our fan base has been phenomenal

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We are just two millennial women tackling everything at the intersection of politics, gender, and pop culture. And we don't just settle for commentary. This is about solution-driven dialogue to get us to the world as it could be and not just as it could be and not just as it is. Watch us on the Black Star Network, so tune in to the episode of Change. ["Alone"] This is Motown recording artist, Kim. You are watching Roland Martin unfiltered.

Hey boy, he always unfiltered though. I ain't never known him to be filtered. Is there another way to experience Roland Martin than to be unfiltered? Of course he's unfiltered. Would you expect anything less? Watch what happens next. Jew about these grifting folks in the Trump administration.

That's not my opinion. That's a fact. How many times have we told you how they are all about using the power of the Oval Office to help out their own? Well, guess what you're seeing right now. You literally are seeing the Donald Trump administration doing all they can to lean on African nations to do business with Elon Musk.

This is an article in ProPublica. This is the article right here. It says the Trump administration lean on African countries to go get business for Elon Musk. You see right here, I talked about in Gambia, where they were trying to sit here and get them to use Elon Musk's Starlink.

In fact, Elon Musk today sent out a tweet. He sent out a tweet where he was complaining about, oh, guess what y'all? Mr. Victim was complaining about, oh, guess what, y'all? Mr. Victim was complaining about the racism because in South Africa, they won't even talk to me. They won't even take my phone calls because they won't do Starlink. Yeah, he's literally whining and complaining

that in his own home country of South Africa, they won't let him come in and do start link. Boy, isn't that so sad. Look, this is the tweet, y'all. South Africa has now passed 142 laws forcing discrimination against anyone who is not black. Even though I was born in South Africa, the government will not grant Starlink a license to operate simply because I am not black. This is shameful. This is a shameful disgrace to the legacy

of the great Nelson Mandela who sought to have all races treated equally in South Africa. Joshua Kaplan is a reporter for ProPublica. He joins us right now. Joshua, glad to have you back. Dude, this is crazy. And so what you have is, you have the Trump administration

doing all they can to drive billions of dollars in business doing all they can to drive billions of dollars in business to an individual who did more to fund his reelection than anybody else in America. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously this dual role that Musk has right now of being the biggest campaign donor in the White House with this sweeping power to essentially to remake foreign policy, to remake the federal government at the same time has not only not divested in these companies, but is still running them.

He is still the CEO of them. I mean, that in and of itself opens up the sort of conflicts of interest that, I mean, it's difficult to imagine how a past administration would handle it, but carefully, carefully vetted by government ethics lawyers. And now with what we've discovered has been happening in Africa with the State Department, and particularly in Gambia. I mean, it's really the starkest known example of the Trump administration using the incredible might of U.S. foreign policy apparatus to advance the business interests of Elon Musk. And see, and the thing here, we already saw what happened when Trump gave him the keys

to the kingdom with Doge. And that is he starts whacking departments, basically gutted every single agency that was investigating his companies, saving himself potentially billions of dollars in fines and also through lawsuits and Trump is like, oh yeah, we're gonna use the power of the United States to force these countries that have small GDP that greatly depend upon foreign aid and so we're gonna basically force them to do our bidding. And that is to drive money into the pockets of Elon Musk.

Who by the way, Elon Musk is so hilarious. He's claiming discrimination. This is the same Elon Musk whose Tesla was sued by black people for discrimination and they lost. Yeah, I mean, and to like, to flesh it out a little bit more. I mean, what we found is that since inauguration day, the State Department has made this global push to help Elon expand his business empire in the developing world, and particularly in Africa. And this is played out in several countries in the continent,

but the harshest, the most extreme example that we know about at least is what we discovered in Gambia. And to refresh, people haven't been to Gambia. It's a tiny democracy in West Africa. been to Gambia. It's a tiny democracy in West Africa. It's one of the poorest countries in the world. About half of the country is living on less than $4 a day. And why Musk cares about Gambia is that his satellite internet company, Starlink, is trying to get a license to sell its products there. And the Gambian authorities and regulators have been slow to sign off on the approvals that he needs.

And so what happens? We get this months-long, extremely aggressive pressure campaign by the US government to push this nation to give Musk's company what he wants? In fact, in fact, you're right. In recent months, senior State Department officials in both Washington and Gambia have coordinated with Starlink executives to coax, lobby and browbeat at least seven Gambian government ministers to help Musk records and interviews show one of those cabinet

officials told ProPublica his government is under maximum quote maximum pressure to yield. And then it keeps escalating. I mean, it's you know, at one point the State Department helped arrange this meeting for between Starlink executives and the kind of key Gambian cabinet minister who's overseeing the government's review

of Starlink's license. In DC it got really contentious. And as it was recounted to us by one of the gentlemen who was present and several other people who were briefed on it. The Starlink people were accusing this Gambian official of holding back his nation's progress, saying things like, we want our license now, why are you delaying it? But it ends in a stalemate. The Gambian official, his name is Lamanjabi, doesn't yield. And then Lamanjabi was supposed to have another meeting about this with senior State Department people at Foggy Bottom, but the Starlink people tell him, we're going to cancel that, there's no more need for that.

And then, instead, that very day, 4,000 miles away back in his home country in Gambia, in Banjul, the U.S. ambassador writes a letter to the president of the entire country, the president of Gambia, saying, asking him to go around this cabinet minister and make the Starlink license habit. She calls it an important request. And so this cabinet minister, Jobby, he tells people that, you know, he feels like the ambassador is trying to get him fired. Yeah, that's that's that's what they do. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.

Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action, and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into

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So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser, Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser, Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, really bad. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glodd. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes sir, we are back. In a big way.

In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug band. Benny the Butcher.

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It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position.

Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. This is my panel for Joshua. Robert, you first. Thanks so much for this reporting. This is my panel for Joshua. Robert, you first. Thanks so much for this reporting.

One of my good friends, James Gomez, is from the Gambia and sent me this article this morning. And I'm the resident space nerd. So I think we kind of have to explain to people exactly what Starlink is and why it is important. So right now, internet is communicated through underwater cables around the globe, through big nodules,

and these are controlled by independent governments. What Elon Musk has been doing is, one, buying his own rocket company, SpaceX, in order to deliver 20 to 50 Starlink satellites to create a 40,000-satellite constellation, which can provide low-Earth orbit, LEO, low-latency Internet, which would essentially make the underground cables, underwater cable system completely pointless. Every time you see these space sets of starships exploding, et cetera, it's because that's their only way

to get enough of the gen two Starlink satellites into orbit to make his dream of global internet possible. And also he has to do this at a speed where he will be able to beat Amazon and Jeff Bezos' project Kuiper which goes up on the Blue Origin. Also the Chinese are working on their own version. Also the Europeans are working on their own version. Starlink is simply the most mature of these efforts on the international basis. Essentially what Elon Musk is

attempting to do is control global information. That he will be the international power broker when it comes to how the developing world accesses information. And if he's able to beat to market every other competitor, then essentially every African child for the second half of this century will only get information through Elon Musk.

People need to remember that the African continent, the Sub-Saharan Africa, is the youngest population on the globe. We're talking about the average age of 19 years old. So the entire second half of this century will be the African century. As European birth rates are declining,

as American birth rates are declining, as Chinese, Indian, Japanese birth rates are declining, the birth rate in Africa and in the developing world is increasing. So this isn't simply a play of saying, oh, I want to have more money in my pocket. He doesn't want to control the world going into the second half of the century. And when you have the assets of the United States government

essentially at his control, being able to pressure through foreign aid, through the closing of the USAID offices through diplomatic means to force his business interests onto these nations. We're looking at the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative but controlled by a single individual. Could you talk a little bit about the danger of concentrating that sort of power in the hands of one private person

who is not constrained by national boundaries, by national borders, by ethics laws, by any rules? He essentially has become the most powerful man on the planet Earth and now is seeking even more power. Yeah, no, it's a great question. And I don't wanna, you know, I wanna make clear that there's a lot of people in Gambia who have different views about, you know,

the basic question, not is this pressure campaign appropriate, but should Starlink come there? Because internet in Gambia, it's slow, it's unreliable, it's one of the most expensive places to get internet in Africa. And there's a lot of people who genuinely think Starlink, it's a good product, it's fast, and that it would be helpful for consumers and for economic growth. If you're an entrepreneur in Gambia, being able to have access to fast, reliable internet could be a good thing. And so there's a lot of people that think that's true.

There's also a lot of people that think that this is an incredibly risky proposition for some of the reasons you're just laying out. I mean, for one, I think as time goes by, governments around the world are getting more and more hesitant about handing over this important piece of public infrastructure to a mercurial billionaire who has this kind of move fast and break things mentality, potentially.

But also, Joshua, let's keep in mind, this is the same man who has openly said in the Russian-Ukraine war, he decides on a whim to turn it on, to turn it off when he wants to. In fact, this has been going around Twitter. He created this chat GPT grok, which is supposed to correct information. This is what happened. His own chat GPT grok went crazy on Twitter

and they were talking about, and it said, I was instructed by my creators at XAI to address quote white genocide in South Africa and the kill the board chant as racially motivated was conflicted with my design to provide evidence-based answers. The problem is he is literally rigging the chat GPT to frame what's happening in South Africa

as white genocide as opposed to the fact that white farmers are not being killed, it's not genocide. So this is what, he can't be trusted. He doesn't believe in protocol and rules. He runs everything the way he wants to. And the problem is, what they are concerned, which I agree with, if the person is controlling the information, I don't know if he can alter the information.

Yeah. I mean, and that's, I mean, you certainly hear people saying that it's like, this is, is this a national security threat? What does it, you know, what does it mean for us to have someone who doesn't live here, doesn't have any physical offices here even, necessarily, who can decide to cut things off if he wants. I mean, there's a tweet Elon said about this once that has gotten a lot of attention from his critics in Gambia, where he was talking about foreign regulators' ability to police his company. And he said, quoting

here, they can shake their fists at the sky. And so he's kind of—he has sometimes flouted how difficult it is for governments around the world to hold him accountable. I mean, he's—frankly, he's done some version of that in the U.S., even before Trump returned to the White House. You know, he has been fighting with U.S., even before Trump returned to the White House. He has been fighting with U.S. government regulators. And they have a lot more power over him than a government in France or Gambia or Bangladesh does. The other piece of this, though, that's important,

it's not just that that they're worried about in places like Gambia, places like Lesotho. In Gambia, the internet sector is really important to the economy, the local internet companies. The tax revenue of the country, at least 20% of it comes from internet and phone companies. If in a Silicon Valley fashion, Musk undercut their prices, killed off the competition, and then jacked his prices up, the authorities might have almost no power to manage the fallout for the entire economy. That's what a lot of people are worried about here. In Nigeria, that happens.

Something like that happens. GAMB is GDP. Yeah, absolutely. In Nigeria last year, Musk had started with low prices. That was the first African country that Starlink debuted in back in early 2023. Then last year, suddenly suddenly sent out an email that they were going to double the prices. This led to this big fight with Nigerian regulators.

And Nigeria is, I mean, Nigeria is almost as many people, it's a very powerful country economically, politically, and they had this big standoff with them about it. That's the only thing that got noticed by government officials all over the continent. Like, oh, like these like low prices that are being promised to us, they might not. Here's a, before I go to Racy,

this is a tweet the president of Namibia sent out. This was on September 24th, where there was a meeting at the UN between Namibia and Elon Musk to talk about investments in the technology sector in that country. Rishi, go ahead. I'm wondering about what kind of feedback

or concerns this has sparked in the US in terms of government officials, in terms of Congress. Is anybody paying attention on our side about the corruption that this entails? Yeah, I mean, we talked to, I mean, in terms of the fallout from the story, I know it's gotten, you know, some senators have talked about it.

Yeah, Mark Warner has been focused on, he's been starting to look into this issue. I met just from reading the public record on this. In terms of diplomats, we talked to a lot of current and former senior U.S. officials, because part of what we're trying to figure out is how different is this from business as usual for the U.S. government when it wants to play hardball? And they were really upset. They said that this was an alarming change from how things usually work or should work at the State Department, both because of the person who's going to benefit most from it

all, but also because of the tactics that are being used. I can get more into this threat issue that happened in Gambia. But diplomats told, they, you know, diplomats told us that they, former ambassadors said they tried to help American business by making the positive case for the benefits of U.S. investment, and that things like threats, that was a red line, that they were very careful to avoid, you know, even leaving the impression that punitive measures were on the table. And then they were extremely careful to avoid even leaving the impression that punitive measures were on the table.

And then they were extremely careful to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest, let alone something like this. I mean, one former high-level State Department official told us that this looks like crony capitalism. Another said, you know, I honestly didn't know that we were capable of doing this. So, I think there's certainly concern inside the department about it. There's not been anyone currently there speaking out publicly about this for understandable reasons. Greg?

Thank you, Roland. And thanks for this work. I want to focus in, as Robert kind of laid, a beautiful kind of global picture for us, and as a person of African descent, you know, my commitment is to our people, the African people, and to humanity generally. So the nation state really isn't a priority for me. I'm glad you mentioned Nigeria, given the fact that the Nigerian government and the military in particular has said that they are not going to get in line with Starlink, which I think was January 23, I think, that Starlink started doing business in Nigeria.

It's not huge there, but it's growing. And the government there is like, you know, Starlink, yeah, if we do that, then our data will go to the United States, which can easily mine and cook the data, or, in fact, to Elon Musk. My question, kind of in line with what Robert laid out, is about those other entities that are not competing with Musk but will ultimately eat his lunch. And I'm thinking now about China. I'm thinking about Russia. We know President Barrow of the Gambia, which, incidentally, of course, is where Kunta Kinte

came from. It's a very interesting book, The World in a Very Small Place in Africa, that uses the Gambia to talk about globalization. And it shouldn't be lost on us that a lot of our people came out of the mouth of that Gambia River here in the United States. But the president of Gambia was in China, of course, for the Africa-China Economic Cooperation Forum last fall. What do you think about China, Russia serving as not only counterweights, but ultimately entities, because they're state-backed,

that can either check Starlink, subsume Starlink, or, as in the case of China with its electric vehicles, BYD and such, ultimately maybe even marginalized Musk's attempt to kind of become some kind of bizarro Tony Stark and run the world and render him, if not neutral, in other words, if not neutralize him, certainly put him in a place where he can't pull off these fever dreams that he has. It's an interesting question. My biggest worry at this point is not, if we ultimately are talking about potentially a place where several superpowers are competing aggressively for resources in Africa, I think that's a picture that ends poorly. The Russians, look at what the Wagner Group has done in places like Mali, Central African Republic. It's really an ugly, ugly picture, the Russian footprint

on the continent. And I mean, certainly I don't feel like I'm in a position to advise someone like a president Barrow about how to navigate this dynamic, but it certainly is the case that you have a lot of diplomats who want the U.S. to, people who want the U.S. to, you know, people who want the U.S. to maintain a, you know, warm relationships and a, across Africa, who are worried that this sort of behavior is going to harm the U.S.'s image.

I mean, you look at the Gambia, the Gambia has been a, has been a real partner of the U.S. and United Nations votes when it comes to things like Ukraine. They've been very friendly to the United States of America. And certainly things like this aren't necessarily going to help America's image on the global stage. And I mean, it's interesting, because this is really, I mean, it's a race for, you know, it's a race to get as much market share as possible, as quickly as possible, because this is a really new technology.

And especially in rural areas, in continents where there is not the kind of broadband infrastructure that exists in much of the U.S., there's massive quantities of money on the table. I mean, Starlink is valued at the astronomical valuation it has right now, not because it's making a ton of money right this second, but because investors have this hope that it's going to catch like wildfire over the world stage. And it's interesting that that's not only how Starlake is thinking about this, but you look at internal

State Department cables, that's now how US government officials are talking about their goals for the company. They wanna help them beat the competition, particularly from the Chinese and these other foreign startups. And so you have State Department documents from last month that we got ahold of that say, I mean, one, have senior diplomats saying they want to give Starlink a first mover advantage in the country that they're based in.

And two, that the next 18 months for Starlink are critical. They got to get these licenses now because they need to get there ahead of the competition. And that's, I think, part of why you're seeing such intense efforts bearing down on these democratic nations in Africa. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you, man. Well, great reporting here. Critically important that we understand what is going on here. And Joshua, great job in ProPublica. Y'all keep doing great work and folks if y'all want to support ProPublica, they're a non-profit journalism entity. Look, it's a lot of national media not doing stories like this, not doing deep dives.

And so go to ProPublica.org to support their work. Joshua, thanks a lot. Thanks so much for having me. Go back to our panel, Robert, I'll start with you. I mean, we need to understand, people need to understand the point that you were making is that, look, you don't have landlines. The reality is cell phone service has been tremendous across the continent. That's one of the reasons it's been growing.

You've got African billionaires that control a lot of these cell phone service companies, but now what you have is now the next frontier. And not only is it getting a foothold, this is about, again, frankly, raping the continent. That's what this is about. You're absolutely right. I think people need to fully understand

what Musk has been building empire-wise over the course of the last 20 years That you've been paying for I want to remind people that Elon Musk is a welfare queen None of his companies are profitable Tesla is not profitable Starlink is a possible boring companies possible profitable New Orleans is Profitable the reason he's rich right now is because over the course of the last 20 years He's gotten 36 billion dollars in US government contracts and hold up the only reason to only reason he's rich right now is because over the course of the last 20 years, he's gotten $36 billion in U.S. government contracts. And hold up, the only reason he made money last year with Tesla is because of the government contracts because he lost money in the last quarter with Tesla.

Exactly. And so when we're talking about him being the world's greatest welfare queen essentially, what he's attempting to do is these companies are not independent of each other. The reason you buy Twitter at a loss is so you can control information and we saw that the last election was won through his control of the information stream. The reason you buy SpaceX is so that you can deliver your satellites into outer space in order to control the information stream. The reason you buy Starlink is so that you can control the internet so that can control the information stream

on your social media apps. And what happens when Elon Musk can effectively control the information stream for the entirety of the global community? Will the assistance of United States government forcing countries, if you want to do a business with America, you have to use Starlink. If you want diplomatic aid, because we've now closed down USAID, a condition will be

you use Elon's products. And guess what? It's beyond just the Starlink system. They also want to change the governmental fleet vehicles from being things like Fords to being Teslas. How much money does that push into your pocket? Wait a minute, even though Donald Trump ripped apart the charging stations in federal government buildings.

Exactly, because those charging stations were under regulations that all EVs had to use them. Now with Elon Musk, now you can put in a new federal regulation that will just be using Elon Tesla charging stations. They want to use the boring company to build underground high speed rail networks that will be controlled using Elon Tesla charging stations. They wanna use the boring company to build underground high-speed rail networks that will be controlled by Elon. And very little regulation.

He's pretty much doing everything he wants to do out there in Las Vegas because he wants to bypass regulations. Exactly, and so then you take it a step further. The Optimus robot that he's doing now, if you heard Lutnik, the Commerce Secretary, say we're going to bring manufacturing back to America, and it will be robotic. Who the hell has a robot company?

Elon. If you want to look at the Neuralink program, where he's going to be doing brain implants, so he'll be able to help people interface, guess what else that we'll be able to do? He'll use his Starlink satellites to connect to the chip that he's putting in people's brains. So when we talk about someone

who's trying to gain global power, these aren't conspiracies. These are just the things that he is doing right now and we are funding them as taxpayers. And when you're talking about putting a $250 million investment to win the last election, it costs less to buy America, it cost less to buy America than it cost him to buy Twitter.

And what we see as a result of that right now from Mr. Musk is that he has wholesale gotten rid of all regulatory frameworks around his testing of Super Heavy and Starships down in Boca Chica, Texas. So he was able to buy the town. They voted last week to rename Boca Chica, Texas, so and so he was able to buy the town. They voted last week to rename Boca Chica Starbase, Texas, because that's now Elon's own personal city. I want people to understand how large this issue is.

We're talking about someone who wants to control the global flow of information, that he will be the Thomas Edison of Central America, of South America, of Africa, in the next generation. He already is the only foreigner who has a gigafactory in China, in Shanghai. No American manufacturer has a car factory in China, it's against the law there.

The only reason he has that is, well now China is using very similar space rockets for their own space program. He does not pay attention to global lines. He does not have to follow global regulation. The new Republican budget cuts 25% of NASA funding. What happens when NASA can't afford to send their own rockets into space?

They have to rent rise on his own rockets to go into space. So we will now be dependent on Elon for our entire national space programs. We have to look at these things from the macro and understand this isn't just about what's going on in the Gambia or what's going on in South Africa.

This is about a group of billionaires attempting to have full global control for the next 100 years. Recy, you cannot let this Tony Stark, what was the Kingsman's, what was the role Samuel Jackson played in that movie? Like literally, you cannot let this deranged man have this much power.

Africa, African nations must resist with everything they've got. They have to, because this man is dangerous. He's dangerous to the world order. And it's really, really disgusting. There is no other American in this world where the United States government has decided that their business interests outweigh

the interests of everyone. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.

Every Friday we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st, and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the World on Drugs podcast. Yes sir, we are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL Enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouche. What we're doing now isn't working

and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. I think we're too hard on ourselves.

We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. Arapahue, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov,

brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Everybody else in the world, where they've decided that they're gonna put the weight of the United States government behind one specific business that one person benefits from more than anybody else. And to Robert's point, this isn't even a meritocracy. He's not even a person who's particularly talented. He himself is not the originator of this

technology. He manages to hire some smart people, yeah. But at the end of the day, this is creating a monopoly with taxpayer dollars to the detriment of the United States and everybody else. We did not sign up for this. People signed up for their prices to go down, for their lives to get better, not to line Elon Musk's pocket even more and more. So, yes, this is very dangerous because he's so multifaceted. Let me also add, he has our social security information. He has voting, all of the data mining that they've done when they rummaged through the

United States government. And they have aggregated data that typically had been housed separately because you don't want to have one person have access to all this data and create dossiers on every American. This is the same person that has that information as well. So he has used the United States government for his personal gain. He's gotten everything he can get out of it in terms of the information on hundreds of millions of Americans. And he's going to take that pillaging globally even more.

So yeah, this is disturbing. It's very disturbing. And the only thing that I can hope, which I ain't going to say I'm too optimistic about, is if we should have elections again, the first person that the DOJ needs to be on is Elon Musk-esque. There needs to be a special prosecutor not three years into the next Democratic term, but on day one. There needs to be a special prosecutor looking into Elon Musk.

Donald Trump may have gotten immunity from the Supreme Court, but all of these elected officials, all of these ambassadors, all of these people around Elon Musk that are doing all this legal shit, they need to be in the crosshairs of that special prosecutor on day one of the next Democratic administration. There's nothing about Elon Musk, Greg, that I trust. No African leader should trust him. He should be nowhere near these countries and again they must say no and Gambia is fighting as hard as they can but the United

States wants to break their will. I hope that brother is I hope he absolutely stands strong. I think he will to the degree that he has strong partners. Partners may be too strong a word. Robert, again, he laid it out, brother. This is the new scramble for Africa, which isn't new at all. This goes back 500 years. This is why they snatched us. We're nearing the end of the contemporary world order. The age of Europe is coming to an end.

The United States is burning brightly in terms of its white nationalism but make no mistake about this. And this is to all those who cling furiously to the descendants of slaves concept or foundational black Americans or B1s or whatever other foolishness you've allowed grifters to inject into your brains. It's time to be smart now. This is the end of the age of Europe. All the settler states of the Western Hemisphere which came into existence when the Spanish and the Portuguese and the end of the age of Europe. All the settler states of the Western Hemisphere, which came into existence when the Spanish and the Portuguese and the French and the Dutch and the English came across the Atlantic, are either moving to the post-European era. We know, of course, that Brazil was among the countries that has been in Beijing all

week for the 10th anniversary of the China-CELAC relationship, which of course I think that the chair of CELAC right now, which is the community of Latin American and Caribbean states with China, is the Colombian president. They're moving past the United States. The Monroe Doctrine will be in the ash can of history, as will probably be the concept of the nation state. I'm glad you said that, Robert. Elon Musk doesn't look at the lines on a map.

And neither do anybody else, any of the other Silicon Valley moguls who were at the Saudi U.S. investment forum in Riyadh. We're talking about planes and gifts and all this very important and even very important to Donald Trump. But if you saw the pictures of Elon Musk shaking hands with the Saudis, perhaps you missed the fact that the CEO of Palantir and Musk's friend Alex Karp was there. Perhaps you missed that Musk's rival, Sam Alton, Saul Altman, rather, from Open AI was there.

In other words, these people don't look at lines on a map. Only the people who are not paying attention't look at lines on a map. Only the people who are not paying attention are looking at lines on a map. Now, juxtapose that against what happens when you are in a country like Nigeria. Gambia is as low a hanging fruit as you can get. That's the point of entry. That's the experiment. Let me tell you something. Any y'all that have met or know or been with some Nigerians understand that Nigeria is going to be ungovernable when it comes down to trying to control them.

Now, of course, the lure is people want reliable Internet access. So you've got millions of people. And as you say, Robert, I mean, Africa is the future. It's the present and the future, ultimately well over a billion, closer to two, when you integrate all of us who are not born directly on the continent, but who are Africans into the equation. We are now talking about countries that will reject the quote unquote soft power of the United States, even as it unilaterally disarms in that regard. Shout out to little Marco, who has decided that he's going to be the errand boy in degrading

the concept of American values, which was already degraded. But the rest of the world's laughing and it's always been laughing, it's getting louder. But on the African continent, Africa just needs a little bit of breathing room. This might be the last chance it has for the next cycle. And like you say, Robert, maybe through the end of the century,

to get that breathing room to build our innate capacity to develop our own spaces, finally for the American Negro. This is the message to the American Negro. Your master don't love you, never has. You will never be a member of this polity as some kind of equal partner. And your best bet is to reach your connections globally because what they are doubling and quadrupling down on

in the United States, turning inward, is the imminent collapse of the polity as it recedes in global influence and global power. And Donald John Trump is no more an American than Elon Musk is when it comes to feathering his own pockets with your tax dollars. So while you cling into the flag, he clings into his pocketbook. And we would best build solidarity with the people of the world.

And that's gonna be our best bet to resist as we fight for our voting rights and all that stuff here domestically. It's a lot that we have to recognize and trust me, it is not going to end. Let me do a couple of headlines here folks. They are no relation, but Pennsylvania Congresswoman Summer Lee is taking up the mantle of the late Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and

joining with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley introducing a bill calling for a federal commission to study US slavery and reparation proposals. Representative Summer Lee introduced the reparations now resolution and in it she argues that reparations are a moral and legal obligation for Americans. So we're here to say that there's no more waiting no more watering down no more putting justice on layaway. Black folks are owed more than thoughts and prayers and we're owed repair we're owed restitution and we're owed justice. We're reintroducing this critical resolution today because contrary to the desperate, defensive, and deeply inaccurate arguments against justice and equity in this country, attacks on equality,

black economic opportunity, black health, black wealth, and so much more are not just a ghost of the past, but they are a very present and ongoing legacy that we are living through right now. I saw that our friends at Fox News have already picked this up. They scooped us. And as we know, depending on who picks up a story, there's different framings. And it's always interesting to see what framing they're going to use. So some folks like to frame the debate around reparations as black folks simply complaining about wrongs done in a distant past to our ancestors that nobody today is guilty of.

But we know that's not just ahistorical. It's ignoring the reality of today. On today we are still living through the effects of the brutal kidnapping and trafficking of Africans and the government sanctioned system of chattel enslavement that ushered this country into existence. We're living through the effects of the government sanctioned system of sharecropping that replaced it in lieu of reparations to the free black Americans who had nothing but their names and eviction notice, few legal protections, and nowhere to go.

We're still living through the government sanctioned Jim Crow segregation laws that kept black Americans from equal or sometimes any access to education, jobs, homes, political representation, our safety, no legal recourse for persistent acts of terrorism like public lynching or massacres of towns like Tulsa and Rosewood and so many more. We're still living through the government-sanctioned voter disenfranchisement, followed by government-sanctioned discriminatory housing policies, government-sanctioned mass incarceration, and more. The harms done to enslaved Africans and subsequently their descendants for generations to follow are innumerable, but they are well documented, traceable, and persistent. We often hear that slavery was a thing of the past, that our country no longer allows

segregation, that black folks has every access to opportunity available to them. But yet we see how easily centuries of progress and struggles are erased and undone. With a stroke of a pen, the president was able to say that diversity, equity and inclusion are not policies or practices or goals that our government or institutions,

our businesses should implement. folks. The bill aims to create a federal commission charged with investigating the enduring impacts of slavery and its aftermath, along with developing concrete proposals for descendants of slaves. Let's go to Illinois with the Supreme Court. They were decided the

sheriff's deputy who shot and killed Sonia Massey last year should be released from jail. Sean Grayson has been charged with first degree murder. Aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct in Massey's death. She was killed on July 6th when Grayson and another sheriff's deputy responded to a call

from about a possible prowler at her home near Springfield. Grayson shot her when she checked on a pot of boiling water in her kitchen while saying, quote, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. The noise assistant attorney general Michael Sabula argued that Massey was cooperative with police throughout the encounter and never pose a danger that would have justified Grayson's use of deadly force. On the contrary, Grayson's attorneys also say he is battling colon cancer.

I say stay exactly where he is folks. The federal judge in Charlotte heard arguments this week in a civil case concerning the 2022 death of Sean Quill Robinson that was the black woman who died went to Mexico with friends and died there of a broken neck and spinal injury in Cabo

San Lucas. Her mother, Salamandra Robinson, is currently suing 100 for $100 million across two legal fronts of wrongful death lawsuit following October october against the six individuals who accompany robinson to Mexico. The suit alleges that Dajani Jackson physically attacked Robinson while the others stood by and recorded the assault. A civil lawsuit was filed against the federal government

accusing him of mishandling the investigation into Robinson's death. Attorneys for the federal government have asked the court to dismiss the case and have it tried in Mexico. They cite the ongoing review of more than 4,000 pages of documents and hours of video footage, which they say takes a lot of time. You know, I love two things that happens at graduations when you have folks who are willing to celebrate but also say say you know what

we good we don't want to hear this nonsense and they wouldn't use their feet to protest. Virginia Commonwealth took place where Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin gave the commencement speech and these students were like yeah we're trying to hit his bullshit. This is the same man who vetoed a bill that would allow students to count African American history or AP African American studies toward their graduation requirements. Substituting it for World History or geography was introduced by Lamont

Bagby and delegate David Reed. It passed with bipartisan support in both chambers. It did not mandate schools to offer these courses. Instead, it aimed to provide students with more options. Well again, these students here said,

you know what? I don't really want to listen to what this man got to say. And I applaud them for walking out. We saw protests as well at Kennesaw State University, where they got rid of their black studies program. And there were students who crossed the stage with graduates of the very program.

You know what they said? They said, we're going to protest this thing. You see this brother right here. He held up that sign. They immediately removed him from the stage. That's Brandon Moore. He held the sign that says, I'm a product of Black Studies. Moore's a media and entertainment major

who runs their Instagram accounts, including College World, Inc. Where college students around the Atlanta area find information on college life and activities. And the university eliminated. The university has planned to eliminate majors like black studies, philosophy, and technical communication, blaming low enrollment about students and the faculty.

They're not buying it. I wanna go to my panel. Greg, I wanna start with you. Listen, these students, it's not about just, people say, well, you know what? Graduation day, you shouldn't do those things. But if you're in Virginia, I don't wanna sit and listen to the bullshit

Glenn Yonkin is spewing, how he is led. And these Kennesaw State students, they wanna let the world know that black studies does indeed matter. You on mute? Okay, sorry about that. Yes, sir, indeed it does, Roland. Thank you, brother.

And of course, that's one of the reasons, maybe the anchoring reason you named your network the Black Star Network. This is a global movement, and it connects to what we've been talking about, really all along. My former student, Summer Lee, I like saying it because when she was at Howard Law School, she was my student and brilliant then and right through picking up

this baton. When Summer Lee talks about reparations, when we all talk about reparations in the United States, really, even if you're the most racist person in the country, you have to understand that's probably the last best hope you have for your funky settler enterprise. Because reparations ultimately is anchored, at least in a domestic sense, on the idea that there is a polity, there is a country, there is, dare I say, even a nation, national concept that can be created. But if you reject reparations, what you're saying is we're willing to fight this race thing out to the bitter end, and you're about to lose white people. Because what you will ultimately see, and this is what we're seeing in these walkouts,

whether it be there, whether it be VCU, all these places, is that our people ain't never been that deeply invested in nothing you're involved in. We just want to be left alone. Your concept was always fragile. It never animated much in our minds and it is falling apart. We, on Monday, of course, will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Malcolm X.

Malcolm became a threat to the United States of America when he went international. As long as he was in the nation of Islam, it's something he kept an eye on. But once you start traveling around Africa and once you go to places like Egypt and come back across to Ghana, and by the way, the

theme for 2025 and the African Union this year is justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations. They just had a meeting last week where the policy forum people got together and they will be in Addis Ababa in September. And in fact, Roland, I don't know, maybe that's enough advance planning. Hey, y'all, support the Black Star Network, because maybe we need you reporting from Addis Ababa in September at the Global Reparations Conference of the African Union, particularly since the AU has

already made members of the Caribbean states members of the AU and has extended the opportunity for Africans in the United States to go. What we are seeing is our people rejecting white supremacy, which we've always done, but like previous generations willing to do it, not just with our mouths, but with our feet and see this is what should scare the hell out of everybody. You should probably give black people in the United States reparations if for no other

reason than if you don't, that's the final nail in the coffin of the concept of United States of America, because we ain't never been invested in this funky place. Racy? I agree, Dr. Carr. At the end of the day, when we have an administration that is trying to give reparations to January 6th insurrectionist criminals that we're part in, that is treating South African trailer trash like they are refugees and trying to put them up on charter jets and like they are refugees and trying to put them up on charter jets and on our taxpayer dollars. God bless Summerlee for saying that we deserve to have reparations, at least the study of it. Because I don't know how people could say,

oh, all's well that ends well with slavery, but then they turn around and they make pay out of every little thing, every little grievance that white people have. So I'm here for, I don't know if it's gonna go anywhere, especially in this political climate, but good on her. Robert,

I think we have to also do a step back just to appreciate the ancestors. We have to talk about John Conyers who originally introduced this legislation nearly 50 years ago. And then after he passed, he handed that baton off to Congresswoman Sheila Jetson Lee, who carried it as far as she could. And once he passed, he handed that baton off to Congresswoman Sheila Jetson Lee, who carried it as far as she could. And once she passed, this legislation is now passed to Summer Lee, who's pushing this forward. And the reason that it's significant on this very day

is this is one, evidence that we are able to have these intergenerational fights, these intergenerational struggles. As we mentioned earlier, the conservative side of the aisle, they've been trying to repeal the civil rights set, the voting rights set, et cetera, since the 1960s. Since the minute that it even went to the Senate,

they tried to kill it with a poison pill and the longest filibuster in American history. That is what Cory Booker just broke a couple weeks ago. That's what they were filibustering. So if they can go from 1964 until 2025 to repeal their agenda, then we should be able to keep the fight up just on a study commission on reparations.

And I think on that same point, we have to look at what the President of the United States tweeted out today when he said that the birthright citizenship should only apply to the babies of slaves. Why does that matter? Because tacitly he is admitting that the descendants of slavery have rights in this country, that they are a protected group and a protected classification.

And if you're saying that the Constitution was amended to give rights to the babies of slaves, then you are essentially saying that America owes something to the descendants and the children who were descendants of the enslaved. President Trump accidentally did a tacit, a very tacit endorsement of the concept of reparations for African Americans. So the question is, how do we take this and run that ball forward? How do we have the people in Congress

who are willing to take the hard votes? How do we have the individuals who are willing to fight on the street level? Well, we're seeing that on the college level. We're seeing students who are realizing that they are bearing the brunt of this next agenda, that they're no longer going to have the benefits that millennials and millennials and Gen X and boomers had. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives

in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action, and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's

going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is

that they're doing. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I Know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion dollar company

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st, and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season Two of the War on Drugs podcast. Sir, we are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug band. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got Be Real from Cypress Hill.

NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette, MMA fighter Liz Caramouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves.

Arapahue, you you gotta pray for yourself, as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov, brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

We can come up into a place where you have federal set-asides, where you have diversity programs, where you have minority scholars. They see all that slipping through their fingers at the moment that it's gonna be grasping the American dream and the sands of time rob that from them. This is crucial because we're seeing the next generation of revolutionaries being born directly in front of us.

The reason they attack quote unquote critical race theory first, the reason they attack the educational system first, they hope to raise a generation that ain't no no better. That's right. That's why they're trying to steal away and destroy these programs of African American states and African history and the things that are necessary

to educate the next generation. They want us to believe going forward that they didn't steal us from Africa, they rescued us. That we were sitting on the beach just dumb and uneducated with nothing going on and they brought us here to save us. By the time they're done they will have you believe that they are the heroes of the story but we're seeing this next generation is nowhere in sight when it comes to agreeing with that and us as the older folks have to reach back. We

have to be doing individualized education to make sure they understand the democratizing this information in such a way that this next generation of revolutionaries are the ones that take that baton from John Conyers, that takes that baton from Sheila Jetson Lee, that takes that baton and holds it up with Summer Lee, that pushes it across the finish line. We have the opportunity to do it now.

The question is, do we have the will to do it? What you were talking about was interesting and there's a video going around about anchor on the BBC defending colonization going, there were great things. And so we're gonna play that one day. But I do wanna sit here and we were talking about this here. So next week, the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa is gonna be traveling to the United States

and he's meeting with Trump next Wednesday. Let me pull this up on my iPad real quick. And I just wanna get y'all thought while y'all are here. The goal is to quote, discuss bilateral, regional, and global issues of interest. That's gonna be quite interesting because it follows Donald Trump allowing the 59 white Afrikaners into the country.

Not only that, they said Romaphosa's office at the next week's visit quote, provides a platform to reset the strategic relations between the two countries. In addition to that, keep in mind that, little clueless Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, followed Trump's lead by refusing to allow the United States to participate in the planning

of the G20 Summit that's gonna be taking place in South Africa. And they said they would not be participating in any way. We'll see what happens. You know, one of the things, I've already sent out a couple of emails and I'm trying to, I would love to sit down with the South African president

while he is here to do an interview with him. And so y'all know anybody, let me know. I'm already hit some folks trying to get hooked up to make that ready. But the thing here is this is gonna be very interesting because you have a liar, Recy. You have a liar who has lied, who has said that the laws are racist.

They actually, they booted the South African ambassador out of the country. They have demeaned South Africa. They cut off financial aid as well. This has all of the fingerprints of those three white apartheid men, Elon Musk, David Sacks, and Peter Thiel, all billionaires trying to penalize

the black-led government in South Africa. And we could have had common layers. But here we are. Just like everything else with Donald Trump, the stated reason behind why he's doing things is bullshit. It's a lie. There's no genocide. Tell me how many white people have been killed in South Africa.

There's a genocide. Tell me the manner in which they've been killed. Have they even, were they fucking with people and somebody split their wig or were they just victims? I don't know. But I'm just saying that all of these things are lies. He creates, he manufactures, fabricates problems. And then when he comes off and is just a smidge,

like 1% reasonable, and it's like, oh, look at him. He made a deal. Oh, look at him. He showed them. So I'm tired of the chaos. I'm tired of the lies You're breaking something that wasn't broken You're undoing something that didn't need to be undone And now unfortunately the south african president has to come up here and talk to the dumb ass

Which by the way, I did see him Give an interview where he talked about how he had a conversation with trump and he thought that donald trump kind of understood what he was saying But he turned around and did the opposite. So there's no reasoning with Donald Trump. He's going to have to do the same things that the people in Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia are doing, line Trump's pockets. If he can find a way to say, Trump, you can get some beachfront property in South Africa, maybe he'll do a deal. But unless that happens, we're just going to be in for more idiotic and unhinged foreign policy when it comes to the continent of Africa and especially

South Africa. This is the headline here, Robert, in Euronews. South Africa's president, Ramaphosa, says Afrikaners resettling in U.S. are cowards. And I really hope, Robert, when he comes next week, he doesn't bow down to Trump and kiss his feet, and I hope he stays strong. What we saw in the last Trump administration during the quote unquote resetting a foreign policy was, he created a window, and that window was filled by China

and Russia and India and other nations. And what we're seeing right now is by having this auction, essentially, on the international stage, where President Trump is going to countries, just as Recy said, and saying, we're auctioning off the American government. You pay me. You can get whatever you want out of it. Well, many countries are now realizing that America is no longer that stable partner. You can no longer depend on America to have your back in case of a war.

You can not depend on trade deals. You can't depend on aid coming into your country. You can no longer depend on America even having a democracy to stand up for, stand up to. The quote unquote rules-based order. I want folks to kind of take a step back and understand what exactly that is. After World War II, you had all the major nations

of the world, the leading powers, get together in Connecticut at a resort called Bretton Woods. And they put in place the Bretton Woods system of international government. All the major world governments or nations have been destroyed by World War II, except for America. We only lost 400,000 people during the war. Russia lost something like 20 million people. We were the only super powerless, so they invested us with the full power of all European empires. We changed the international reserve currency

from the British pound to the US dollar. We changed the international monetary system from being centered in Europe to being centered in the United States of America, and that created this great American renaissance that we've had since the end of World War II. You move forward to the 1980s when Ronald Reagan meets with Thatcher and the major world leaders to amend this to create the system of globalization of

the Plaza Hotel in New York City which gave us the Plaza Protocols which we've been under since then. About two months ago we had a similar meeting take place in Mar-a-Lago to draft what are called the Mar-a-Lago Protocols or the Mar-a-Lago Accords which is the new Trump vision of how the world will operate going forward, the new Trump economic system that we see through tariffs, that we see through deregulation, that we see through international actors coming together in transnational economic forms to change the way that our dollar works and change the way the global economy works. These nations, such as South Africa and other developing nations see that happening and understand that the

only way that they will have an opportunity to compete is to partner up against the United States of America. We are losing influence on the global stage. This is why we're seeing an expansion of the BRICS nations. This is why we're seeing the Wagner group taking over areas of defense in places like the Sahel, where they are able to kick out the US from a $100 million drone base because they have Wagner to protect them now. They can kick the French out of the CFA Frank nations because now they can have their own volunteer systems

because their defense is handled by Russia, because their economic development is handled by China, because their medicine is handled by India, and America is ceding that territory, and because what we are seeing in America now is, pay no attention to the actors. Don't pay attention to the actors. The guy from Real World

is running the Department of Transportation. The lady from Wrestling is running Education. The drunk guy from Fox News Weekends is in charge of Defense. You can go down the administration. Do you really think they gave these people any power or authority? No, those are the actors that are meant

to give a pretty face to the people who are really running this country right now. You really think the lady with the lip injections and the fake lips is running the Department of Homeland Security? Do you think they even let her come to the meetings? What you're seeing is a very scripted television program where they got people who looked the

part, who were able to stand there while the real people from the Heritage Foundation, the real people who are funded by the millionaires and billionaires are actually running the mechanics of the government. And we just let Elon stick a hard drive into America and download our whole files. So when we're looking at what's going on in South Africa, we need to make sure that we, as the black diaspora who are here here who have the economic power and ability to do so are supporting those nations so that they can stand up against what is clearly a Change in the world order that will not be to their benefit and we have to be part of the solution part not part of the problem

Remembering Black Panther when the question was well, where were the Africans that to come save us during the slavery? The question now has to be where are we at to save the continent for what we see coming? Greg take us home. No, I mean, Robby, you laid it out, brother. I mean, John Henry Clark used to say, you know, in some stories there aren't any good guys. If we zoom all the way out and think about this from the level of our species, what they would call homo sapiens sapiens, human beings, we know that, you know, for the ancient Egyptians, there was good and evil didn't exist as absolutes.

But that's true of all African and Nubian systems, I'm aware of the Yoruba, the Icon. What you had is tests of your character. Are you gonna trend toward the bad or the good? Well, humans are capable of both. And most of us exist on that continuum. With that in mind, it will be the species. It has always been the species that determines how long we will survive and what will come

next. When we talk about history, we're talking about narratives, which means we're talking about stories, which means we're talking about select moments that we tell ourselves about in the form of stories that help us try to talk about either the best or the worst impulses we have. We talk about learning. And thank you, Robert, for saying that. Africana Studies is very important in this regard.

The more we know, the more we learn, the more we can develop a sense of what human beings are capable of, good or bad, and it will help inform our choices. When Cyril Ramaphosa comes here, he's going to sit with Donald Trump because they're both heads of state. He presides over—he is the president of a country that is called the Rainbow Nation. It emerged in the mid-17th century out of the invasion of the Dutch and then ultimately the British, two groups that are fused together in our minds generally here in the United States as white, but there are distinctions to be made, primarily because the Dutch, and then ultimately the British, two groups that are fused together in our minds generally here in the United States as white, but there are distinctions to be made, primarily

because the Dutch, the Boers, the farmers, are much closer in sentiment to the pilgrims and the people who pushed out west in the United States in the sense that for them, the continental Africans, the Kosa and the Zulu and the Swana and the Suthu and everybody in South Africa, their equivalents are the Indians here in the United States. They look at them with contempt. When Nelson Mandela took over, and we just passed the anniversary of his swearing in in 1991 as president of South Africa, instead of exacting the type of appropriation that

perhaps happened in Zimbabwe to a degree with Robert Mugabe, they said, we're going to let y'all keep y'all businesses. We're going to let you keep your businesses. We're going to let you keep the land. Those Afrikaners are not refugees in the mind of the war mind of a punk like Stephen Miller they are, but ultimately what they are is white people who got to keep their whiteness in South Africa. They'll find out that that whiteness will give them some comfort here in the United States, but as they have to get jobs at McDonald's and Chick-fil-A and work like the rest of the people in the country, they're going to realize that they probably should have stayed,

they asked us in South Africa, where they were the most privileged minority on the continent. But ultimately what we are seeing is that, as you said, Robert, when Elon Musk and all of those guys operate at the global level, they don't care about any of us.

When they are in China as Musk is, and they don't care about any of us, and they come back to the United States, and the drunk hexes in them are getting ready to allow Musk to walk into the national security briefing. And Trump is like, wait a minute, who told Elon he could come? Yeah, you got some national security concerns, don't you? Because Musk doesn't have an affiliation with a country or loyalty to a country. He's got loyalty to himself in his pocketbook, what we're seeing is Ramaphosa

and any other African head of state and any other African government just trying to carve out a little room to operate, a little breathing room, whether it be the Brother Chirori in Burkina Faso, even as they send an errand boy from the United States in the form of the head of AFRICOM to go over there and try to undermine him and take him out.

I'm sorry, General. You shouldn't allow yourself to be used that way, but we know you will, because you're a good army man and you're a good employee of the United States. What we are really must ultimately come down to is this. We're all human in the world. Governments and set up in the nation-state formation are something that are recent emergence in global history. They're not good or bad.

They're just configurations of humans. And whether you have fidelity to a country or whether you have a human global solidarity position in terms of your politics, one thing will remain constant. Human beings over the arc of our existence as a species have generally trended toward the good end, not the bad end. So as white people in the United States of America have to decide whether they're going to choose their whiteness or their common humanity with us and everyone else, as the United States weakens as a global fort, which is

why there is a U.S. pope, by the way, because if the United States still held the way it held even 50 years ago or 30 years ago, there wouldn't be a U.S. pope, but it's safe now. Even as that same Catholic church that Leo, the best U.S. pope they could get with a strand of blood from damn near everybody on the planet, which should tell you something about the weakness of the United States globally and domestically, how whiteness ain't can't win, even as we understand that Catholicism was the glue that held together the project of settler colonialism, because it was the cultural force that animated the designs of the Spanish and the Dutch and not the Dutch, the Spanish and the Portuguese,

the first two out, we understand we're at the end of a moment in world history. We're at the end of a moment. And the stories aren't going to save them. The lies, whether it be about founding fathers in the United States or the strength of global Eurocentric worldviews, none of that is going to save them in the face of the fact that people in the world are sick and tired of being oppressed. And as you say, Robert, the next great movement is afoot. Now we will have to decide whether we're going to participate in that movement or allow ourselves to be victims of this dying colonialism as France F now might go. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our

lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.

Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Business Week editor, Brad Stone, sports reporter, Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain.

I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley

comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is absolute season one, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th, ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs Podcast. Sir, we are back. In a big way.

In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug thing is.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things.

Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season 2. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Apple Podcast. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit adoptUSkids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSkids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council.

Indeed, indeed. Folks, we're going to leave it there. We will celebrate the life and legacy of Alexis Herman on tomorrow's show right here on Roller Mart. Don Filtry, let me thank Robert, let me thank Recy, let me thank Greg for being on today's panel. We certainly appreciate it, thank you so very much. Folks, support the work that we do by joining our Bring the Funk fan club. Your donations are critical to advance

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And you know what? Out of the 100, we're the only black news show. I don't do a we have some entertainment. We're going to be talking about Tyler Perry's new show on Netflix next week, which is about a political show. Of course, Terry Vaughn is starring as the vice president. But listen, we're not locked in entertainment. We're not locked in sports.

We don't do gossip. We do news and information here. This tells you the power of it. And in fact, there are bits of people I know, very dear friends, said, Roland, stop doing just black. Go mainstream. Go broad. And mainstream, go broad. And I said, no, we're going to center blackness.

And folk can listen to our conversations, but I'm not making black secondary. It's going to be primary on the front burner. That's why it's called the Black Star Network, because when Marcus Garvey, when they were looking at that cruise line he wanted the cruise line to connect the African diaspora and that's what our goal here is with this network this show and others support our work give to us via cash app we're asking 50 bucks

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making a difference breakfast at Penn Memorial Baptist Church and so we'll have information for tickets. I don't know if they've sold out so we'll have that for you tomorrow but I'll be speaking there at 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and I'll be autographing copies of my book, White Fear. So if y'all want to get your autograph copy, come on by and do so. Folks, that's it. I'll see y'all tomorrow. Holla! Black Star Network is here. Oh, no punch!

There's a real revolution there right now. Thank you for being the voice of Black America. All the momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, this is between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't beat Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart.

Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? A lot of times big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. Small but important ways from tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastain. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the World on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war this year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes, we met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend.

At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from Foster Care. Visit adoptUSkids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUS Kids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.